Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Cleopatra Walks Among Us!

Cleopatra was spotted strolling the Egyptian collection at the Penn Museum (http://www.penn.museum/). The young queen--otherwise known as an intern at a local TV station--was there to publicize the Penn Museum's Egyptian collection and bring attention to The Franklin Institute's CLEOPATRA THE SEARCH FOR THE LAST QUEEN OF EGYPT show, opening June 5.

My newest kids book on the great queen releases this August. The publisher--Boyds Mill Press-- has been in conversation with the exhibitors about including CLEOPATRA RULES! in their stores. I think it would be a perfect fit. I'm really hoping they agree!

I like the lovely young woman's outfit, especially the Greek dress since Cleopatra was, like all the Ptolemies, Greek. The snake arm band is pretty cool too. The headpiece though? Not so much. The real Cleopatra VII, if she were wearing a Greek dress, would most likely be wearing a Greek diadem.

The exhibitors of the CLEOPATRA show say they will be visiting five cities. The Philly exhibit goes through January. I can't wait to find out what the other cities will be included (please be Atlanta, please be Atlanta...).

Check out the Franklin Institute show at http://www2.fi.edu/.


5 comments:

Elizabeth O Dulemba said...

No kidding! That would be SO cool!!! :)

Vicky Alvear Shecter said...

Cross your fingers!

Terri Hoover Dunham said...

I would love to see the show come here too, to Baton Rouge.

GroovFlowr said...

But that's Queen Puabi's headdress from their Mesopotamian collection, not the Egyptian one...

Vicky Alvear Shecter said...

GroovFlowr, thanks for commenting. I'm sure the costume (likely picked up from Target or Party City!) was never meant to be historically accurate. If it were, she would need to be wearing a Greek chiton and her hair put up in waves in the Greek style, right? My friend Nukarami calls this "Hollywood" history--finding the image that people respond to as characteristically true, even if it's false! I had similar pangs with the German cover of my book, which used a crown from the 18th dynasty to represent a princess of the Ptolemaic dynasty...